Author Archive for admin – Page 4

It’s good to learn from other people’s mistakes — so we don’t end up making them ourselves! In today’s guest post, Rachel Hyun Kim writes about 2012’s worst social media failures, and what we can learn from them. Take notes!

Social media is a constantly evolving process, with no formula set for a perfect campaign. While cheap, far-reaching, and sharable, social media is not without its potential downfalls. Unfortunately, many individuals and companies are learning this the hard way. Take a tip from the following failures, and make sure that your company learns from the mistakes of the following examples:

In today’s guest post, Juliette Schmerler lists seven commonly missed opportunities for exposure, both online and offline. Does this list inspire you to try a new marketing platform?

There are undoubtedly a number of marketing methods that your business is NOT using at the moment to improve your visibility with potential customers. Unfortunately, too many businesses feel that if they have a website, they have done enough to make themselves visible. The truth is, today’s businesses need to make use of many methods in order to make it easy for their customers to connect with them.

Here are just a few methods which are commonly overlooked, but can bring a lot more exposure to your company:

Today we have a guest post from Karen Southall Watts, who tells us to be courageous and ask ourselves the toughest questions about our business. Doing so may not be pleasant but, trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

You’re tired or cranky. The office seems overly noisy but not productive. Something seems off, but you aren’t sure what.

It happens to all entrepreneurs—the time comes to look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.

Don’t shy away. Just face yourself and you can move on to greater success.

Our biggest challenge in PR is getting our stories published in the news. But to get in the news, we must first be “newsworthy.”

Unless your business is related to politics or celebrities, chances are you need to work at being newsworthy. Don’t despair, even the most mundane of businesses can be compelling enough to land the news.

How many eyeballs will the press release reach? How effective will your keyword placement be? Did you anchor your links properly for optimum SEO? So many questions, and they all make a huge difference to your company’s well-being. So how to track how well your SEO press release does?

Search Rank

The easiest way to tell just how great your SEO press release is doing is by how far up you’ve moved in your search ranking! If you started out buried on page four and suddenly find your website listed on page two, then you can rest assured your SEO press release is working, barring any extenuating circumstances.

Keep in mind this might not happen all at once, and not for every single web crawler. All use different algorithms to search the Internet and may provide different results. As a result, you’ll want to check each search engine to see where you rank. Over time this will change, hopefully for the better.

If there is little to no result, you may want to go back to the drawing board with your SEO press release. Again don’t expect everything to happen all at once, but if days and weeks go by and your site has gone nowhere, give it another shot.

Trackers

If you’d rather not spend half your day looking at multiple search engines, then you may want to give an SEO tracker a go. These automatically crawl around the web looking to see where your site ranks, and can even let you know when other sites and bloggers mention you.

They range from the inexpensive, like Sheer SEO, to the free yet a little more complicated, like Google Analytics. The more expensive ones are naturally going to be more in-depth and headache free, and most will do everything you need without you lifting a finger.

Remember when I mentioned looking at the different search engines to see where you are? Technically, that’s almost impossible to do by yourself, as there are over 700 search engines. You’d literally do nothing all day long if you tried to do that! However, it’s important to recognize that three search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) comprise more than 95% of all search traffic. Focus on these engines and don’t get distracted by the others.

Also, some higher end tracking software can suggest related keywords to use in the future to increase your page rank. This can give you a better idea how to get to that coveted “page 1,” which can often make a huge difference in how easily potential new customers find you.

This guest post is by Mickie Kennedy, the founder of eReleases – home of affordable, next generation press release distribution. Mickie also publishes PR Fuel, a PR-centric blog that showcases advice and articles on all things social media, PR publicity, and online marketing.

In today’s guest post, PR professional Laura Ward takes us back to basics by explaining the key PR tools to consider and how to choose the right ones.

So you’ve decided to add public relations to your marketing mix. Or, you’re considering it. Either way, fantastic! Congratulations on making (or, getting ready to make) a very smart business decision.

Public relations helps build brands, generate awareness and visibility, and drive bottom line results. However, simply realizing you need and want public relations doesn’t make developing and executing the right plan any less intimidating or overwhelming. PR is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the lazy.

Most times, upon answering questions about what they do for a living, PR professionals are the proud recipients of responses such as, “Oh, that’s nice. So, you write press releases.”

In this part of the book, you will read about Maria Perez’s experience in tweeting as a brand. Author Sarah Skerik then summarizes her top tips for using key social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You’ll definitely find a few gems you can implement right away.

Here is the table of contents for Part 4 of “Unlocking Social Media for PR”:

Riding the Social Media Journey

The final part (part four) in this eBook series takes a closer look at the social media journey of Maria Perez in her role as the voice of @ProfNet, Maria shares her experiences and lessons learned as she carefully built a brand on Twitter – and mastered the difference between professional and personal tweeting. The eBook concludes with the author’s, Sarah Skerik’s, thoughtful recap and key takeaways from her ongoing journey through social media.

In Part 3, author Sarah Skerik dives into strategies for using specific social networks for PR: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, and discussion groups and forums. These chapters contain the nuts-and-bolts of the ebook.

Here’s the table of contents from Part 3 of “Unlocking Social Media for PR”:

Today we continue our series on “Unlocking Social Media for PR,” an ebook by PR Newswire.

If you missed the first part of the series, click here to read an excerpt from the ebook: the Introduction and table of contents of the ebook’s first part, “Wetting Your Feet in the Pool of Social Media.”

The second part of the ebook is entitled, “The Evolved Practice of Journalism and Earned Media Landscape.” In this installment, you’ll gain insight on how journalists use social media. You’ll also learn about “evolved media,” and why all businesses should strive for that ideal combination.

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Please assume that I have a material connection with some of the products/services mentioned on my blog. That means that I may receive a commission if you purchase through my link. While I only recommend what I truly believe in, please do you own research to decide if a purchase is best for you. Thank you!